Google has recently had to make tough decisions regarding law and ethics. Some appear to have been easier than others but each issue tackled – piracy, pornography and facial recognition – has seen the company act as a gatekeeper to this emerging online grey area. By this I mean that Google has had to make a call on what’s legal, what’s illegal and what it’s comfortable with providing as part of its service.

At the end of May it emerged that Warner Bros and NBC Universal had requested that Google remove Mega.com – a digital storage site owned by German-Finnish internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom – from its search results. They alleged Mega’s homepage linked to pirated versions of the studios’ films Mama and Gangster Squad, thus breaking the law.

Mega.com, launched in January this year, replaces Dotcom’s Megaupload, which was shut down in 2012 for violating piracy laws. While Dotcom has been clever with the new site, building it around legal loopholes (files are encrypted so Megaupload cannot see what content its users are storing and its terms of use forbid the sharing of copyrighted material), it’s unclear whether his arguments would stand up in court.

In the end, Google declined the takedown. But mainly because Mega’s homepage appears not to link directly to any files, legal or otherwise. On this case, Google has stood by the mantra “innocent until proven guilty”.

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Meanwhile in the UK, the search giant was this week lobbied by politicians and charities to restrict access to pornography via its search results. The requests came after it was revealed that two recent, shocking, sexually motivated crimes against children – including the murder of April Jones – were committed shortly after the perpetrators had searched online for child pornography and other violent content.

Google already removes any indecent images of children as soon as it’s made aware of them, stating that it has a “zero tolerance policy” to child sexual abuse content. So what else should be done? Some have called for their restrictions to go further, arguing that access to legal explicit material should be behind registration walls, or even blocked entirely.

Again, Google has been required to make an important judgement in legal territory. And this time the issue spills into more delicate ethical territory. Google hasn’t acted on the censorship requests, staying true to the letter of the law. However, this week did see the company take a stand on pornography, specifically regarding an Android app built for its Glass device.

So, while the company is happy for users to access legal explicit material on its mobiles, tablets and browsers, it appears Glass is off-limits. Does Google share our concerns about sitting next to someone watching porn on the bus?

In other Glass news this week, the Android manufacturer announced that it would not allow face recognition apps for the device “without having strong privacy protections in place”. That might yield a sigh of relief for privacy advocates, but it sounds more like they’re shelving the idea until legislation catches up with the technology.

It appears that, when it comes to grey areas, Google is more relaxed with third-party content than its own. Google sensibly stood firm on a flawed takedown request and sensitive calls for censorship, staying close to the line of the law. But when it comes to its much-criticised Glass device, the company would rather err on the side of caution. For now, at least.